


Build From This

by cornix



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cheesy, Fluff, Multi, a faint whiff of angst, literally no one asked for this, magnus thinks about things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 01:21:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13400451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornix/pseuds/cornix
Summary: In his long, improbable life, Magnus has been looking for what every happy ending should have: a home, and a family.





	Build From This

In his first world, Magnus never builds a house. Nor does he make a home.

It doesn't strike him as odd until much, much later, how, just as he once didn’t know how to build and carve and join, there was a time when he had little concept of _home_ other than ”a roof over one’s head”.

Well. A century is a lot of time to learn.

This is how it begins: seven people watch as their world is destroyed. This is new, to all of them; a grief so unique there ought to be a word for it.

(Lup suggests _kerfel_ , but that is so much later that it’s become hard to distinguish one grief from another, and the distance allows them all to smile at the suggestion.)

It’s not just the grief, though. That’s not what Magnus is built from. Yes, there is that one day at the end of every year ( _cycle_ , Barry calls them, but that just seems unnecessary to Magnus) when the sky is black and there is death and fear and grief, but in between them, there is almost enough room to forget.

Magnus becomes very proficient at forgetting.

He makes friends. He learns new things. Taako says it’s pointless, of course, says they’re all gone soon anyway, but Magnus likes to think they all know better than that. And when there are no friends to be made, when there is no new culture to learn in a world, they all circle back to their silver ship, both disappointed and relieved. 

_This is a home,_ he thinks, one day, waking up in his cabin on the ship. Then, _This is_ our _home_. Lucretia says it first. It’s one of the first worlds they visit, an uninhabited one, and her, Merle and Magnus are out on one of their fruitless searches for the Light on a vast, gloomy moor.

”It’s getting late. Let’s go home,” she says, and for just a fraction of a second, Merle and Magnus’ eyes meet.

”Yeah,” says Merle, at last, ”let’s.”

That evening, Magnus sits by their dining table listening to the sounds coming from the kitchen, of Lup and Taako cooking, and Barry’s occasional awkward input to the conversation. He stands leaning on the doorframe, not quite brave enough to enter the kitchen, but unable to leave all the same. Further down the table Lucretia is writing, into two journals simultaneously, and by the window, Merle and Davenport are playing that complicated card game Magnus never managed to learn. _Yes,_ he thinks, _this feels like home_.

Always fleeing the Hunger between worlds, their only constant is the Starblaster. Even in worlds where they find other accommodations, they somehow always seem to end up back on the ship after particularly trying days. Magnus watches how Barry always seems to gravitate towards Lup in any room they’re in, and thinks, _Yes, it’s like that_. 

A century passes, and he is no longer running, no longer Head of Security, no longer part of a family. He is just… Magnus.

For Steven Waxmen, that turns out to be enough. The carpenter takes him under his wing, and eventually even makes him the co-owner of the Hammer and Tong. And, of course, there’s Julia. For Julia, he doesn’t want to be enough. He wants to be everything. (Magnus is still young enough that that seems reasonable, and he tries. Oh, he tries.)

With Julia, life turns into a beautiful thing. Had Magnus had his memories and his family still, he would have asked Lucretia for the right words to describe it. He looks at Julia’s silhouette beside him in the _(their)_ bed, in the house they built, and his own words seem insufficient. He thinks of waking up to the warm sun on his face, thinks of freshly cut grass, of resurfacing after a dive in the lake by the house he grew up in. _Yes,_ Magnus thinks, _it’s like that_.

Somewhere, deep inside, Magnus knows that all beautiful things must come to an end, though he cannot recall how or where he learned that. It is, in his forgotten experience, the nature of beauty; fully separated from grief, it loses most of its weight, becomes inconsequential. Had Magnus believed he and Julia would live forever in that house, he wouldn’t turn to look every time he thinks he hears her voice down the Craftsman Corridor, wouldn’t have kissed her goodbye that day, wouldn’t have told her he loves her.

Yes, all beauty has an end, but it needn’t be brutal. It needn’t be pointless. It is mindless and terrible and incomprehensibly painful, what happens, and there is no going back to being just Magnus, after. But he is not built from grief alone. In the grand scheme of things, he has that beautiful life for only a moment, but it is a wonderful thing to have had, and he’ll always have that moment.

Before he knows it (quite literally, in this case) he has some of his old family back. He makes new friends. He learns new things. Where once he was ready to greet death at any crossroads, eager to be with Julia once more, he now works so, so hard for a new chance at happiness. He builds a house. He makes a home.

Sitting in the fourth row, now, in the temple they built from the ruins of that terrible battle, Magnus takes one final glance around. He sees the back of Lucretia’s head where she’s sitting, straight-backed as always, and beside her, just the tip of Cap— Davenport’s head is visible. In the front of the crowd, standing on top of a chair behind the lectern, Merle is smoothing down the front of his clerical robe. He is nervous, of course, although he’d never admit it. Magnus can see Angus, taller now than he was when they first met him, his head bent down, no doubt reading that new book Lucretia got him. Lup has her arm around Barry, and she is laughing at something and Barry does that thing with his hand on the back of his head that he does when he’s happy, and a little embarrassed. Magnus smiles. Taako has his head leaned on Kravitz’s shoulder, and Magnus smiles even wider. The musicians start playing.

His family are all here, and two doors open for his best friend and her fiancée to finally get married. _Yes_ , Magnus thinks. _It’s like this_.

 

 

 

 


End file.
